Discussion: Home Team in Elimination Brackets

Home Team in Elimination BracketsQUESTION: Why is the team that goes undefeated in a tournament elimination bracket subjected to a coin flip to determine home team for the first championship game. It seems that the undefeated team from the winners bracket has earned the home team status by virtue of performance. With the five-run rule, home team status is very important and often determines the outcome of the game because it is difficult for the visiting team to build much of lead to offset the open inning of the home team.

My suggestion is to amend the rules for all future tournaments with elimination brackets to reward the undefeated "winners bracket" team with home team status for the first of the two championship games. If they lose the first game, then the coin flip determines home team for the "if"game.

Seems to me that if the team coming out of the losers bracket is the automatic "visitor," and would win that first game, they would deserve the right to be "home" team in the "if " game. Why even flip a coin?

I have often thought the same thing about earning the right to bat last in a championship game. Lately, however, after spending more time in the losers bracket than we did last year, it seems the accomplishment of making it to the finals by winning several more games is every bit as significant as winning your way through the victors bracket.

If the bracket contains 17 teams (as the 50/AAAs did in Carson City), the losers bracket representative might enter the finals after winning as many as 8 consecutive games. That would be worthy of at least a coin flip to determine last licks, in my opinion.

DD,don't get put into the losers bracket.it should be the choice of the winning bracket team to be home or not.why would you allow a team from the loser's bracket be able to choose.the only hard part is the number of games u play for bringing it onto yourself,your playing other losers.

mad dog,
Within the last 2 years I played for a team that lost the first one intentionally to get in that bracket. I think the rationale was that we were better than those in it, and we were, so go in to come back and play more... it all, back fired.

Only time we wanted to be vistors was in RR when total runs made a deferance in seeding. Sometime you play a Major or AAA team in RR and you are AA, no reason to let them have an all you can get inning in that case.

Like many of you, I've been playing in DE events since the early 70s. A coin flip has always decided which team gets to choose home or visitor. Why change it now?
Sometimes the undefeated team has had a first round bye and sometimes not. Most of the loser brackets teams had to work their tails off just to get to the championship game. Why penalize them?
Why not let the boxing champ (as opposed to the challenger) choose if he wants to throw the first or last punch?
Damn, every time we turn around someone wants to add a new rule to the game. Baseball has been played 'forever' and has prospered with minimal changes. Yes, they have added the DH and inter league play but this isn't a great deal of change for a product that is 130 years old. Softball (slow pitch) is only 40 years old or so... I'm talking about the high end variety, not rec ball.
Whether you are home or visitors you still have to play the game and out score your opponent. You still have to make the plays. Is there something inherently wrong with this? It isn't a chess match or '8 ball'.
Because of this type of pretzel logic we need to convene a task force to determine how the major plus division ought to be played. Aren't we supposed to be wiser as we get older? It is a great game if we don't screw it up.
BW

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